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Double on Opening Day

Always wanted to pull off a double with one of the kids and we finally did. We were set up in the morning in a blind overlooking a field. However the gobblers weren't in the hollow below us where we expected them. Behind us we heard quite a bit of gobbling on the roost. A little after flydown it became apparent that a couple of gobblers from behind us were headed our way. Didn't take the longbeards long at all to close the distance to us. Colton let them get around nicely in front of us, but then he blew a 20 yard shot. Probably because he was shaking badly. LOL. The birds ran out about 75 yards from us and stopped. I got back on the call and started calling aggressively towards them. The one that he didn't shoot at started gobbling and strutting and got pretty fired up. He even started our way a little bit. All of sudden we heard another bird coming in from behind us. The 2 in front of us started getting nervous and headed the other way. A long beard, a jake, and I think a jake without a beard came around us from the left. The long beard was further out, but the other 2 were in range. I told him to be careful as I wasn't sure if the one had a beard. He said well the front one does. The long beard was ignoring our decoys and I think was headed to the other gobblers to run them out of there. Well all 3 stopped for a second and I thought he was shooting at the lead jake. Turns out we had our signals crossed and he shoots the longbeard. We ranged it afterwards and it was at 50 yards. Pretty good poke with a 20 gauge. Anyone that bird drops and the jakes run out to about 40. I gave it a few seconds to make sure the longbeard was staying down. He handed the gun over and I dropped the one that had a beard. After my shot there was actually another gobbler that was coming from behind us, but we got out to inspect our kills. All in all it was an exciting morning. I told him we could have both had longbeards if he hadn't had missed the 1st one. LOL. His had a 9" beard.

Untitled by cspot12, on Flickr

Untitled by cspot12, on Flickr